Aircraft attacking ships

[Lucy]

We just played a VAS game with aircraft attacking ships. We were playing that only three planes max may an attack on a ship.

the rules state:"Only three flights (of any type) may attack a single ship in the same turn."

Question:
1. Is this three flight of torpedo planes, three flight dive-bombers, and three flight of level bombers attacking one ship?
Or just three flights total may attack?

2. If four flight of planes survive the AA fire but you can only attack with three, may the fourth surviving plane return to attack the next turn?

Thank you

Rod

 

[Jack Tar]

The player has the option of attacking with any planes he has spent points on - just make sure the right plane for the job attacks a ship. Thus it is just three flights in total may attack.

If the fourth flight of planes survives they may attack a ship in the next turn, provided that a) no more than three flights attacks any given ship, and b) it isn't shot down by AA or enemy planes before it gets to make its attack.

 

[juggler69uk]

as Jack explained you may position any number of planes in the attack position and once AA etc is complete the answers to your questions are :-

1. Three flights total

2. Yes

 

[Okie]

Has anybody got experiance with air vs surface ship that they could share. As we have had no luck at all against ships with our air????? Okie

 

[hodgski]

Played with Carriers for the first time last night - Just using the main rulebook so expected the aircraft to suck but actually we were both pretty happy with the results.

Two "waves" (ie: three flights each) of dive bombers was enough to pretty much cripple a cruiser - allowing my own cruiser to knock them out.
We ignore the +1 to hit against dive bombers as they are already easier to hit in their own stats.

Also avoided targeting squadroned ships; to reduce AA fire. So usually 3 dice of AA hitting on a 4 or 5 with a 5+ dodge roll for my dauntless' usualy left one point of damage on my planes before they attacked.
Having Damage 2 on flights is a major bonus.

3 flights vs one cruiser = one likely to hit so likely 3 points damage and maybe a critical if lucky. Not terrible - probably about the level of effectiveness we were happy with.

 

[Stormbringer]

Where we play we have done away with the three flight rule as this seems rather silly, three flights would not have a chance of sinking a cruiser nevermind a battleship without a lucky die roll.

 

[Soulmage]

Yeah, we've ditched the 3 flight rule as well. Seems to work ok for us.

 

[hodgski]

Another thing we tried to improve rules from the MRB (dont have OOB yet)

Squadroning planes in the same way as ships, so place the counters together (we did up to three) and move them as one group, with one AA "reaction" per group rather than per counter. In effect they all attack at the same time.

In dog fights you could just roll all the dice together.

 

[Soulmage]

Not sure what you're getting at there. . .

AA isn't provoked as a "reaction" to attack. All AA guns fire in the AA phase at the beginning of the shooting phase. They fire only once, and split their dice however they see fit. Makes no difference how many groups of planes there are.

 

[rcbecker1]

We played with carriers and planes this weekend during my demoes. I found out that the Italians early war are at a disadvantaged position against planes. The rules seem to work quite well. but I missed the part about three flights max. :wink: